Broccoli: Eat This Vegetable to Reverses Diabetes Damage

It’s really hard to control a diabetic’s blood sugar levels, especially when you don’t know the needed diet for it. Adding broccoli to your diet is a great start.

Broccoli has a compound calledsulforaphane that can reverse the damage that diabetes causes on the heart’s blood vessels.

Sulforaphane stimulates the production of enzymes that are responsible for blood vessels protection and reduces the number of molecules which cause cell damage (known as Reactive Oxygen Species) by up to 73 percent.

People with this condition are more likely to have cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and strokes. This is directly connected to the blood vessel damage.

Cardiovascular diseases are the most common side effect of diabetes. Almost 65 percent of people with diabetes die from heart attack or stroke. This is why keeping your heart healthy is extremely important if you have diabetes.

Diabetes, when is not controlled, damages the blood vessels, including those which lead to the brain and heart. This enhances the possibility of formation of plaques, or also known as atherosclerosis, which can gradually make difficult for the blood to flow and this can eventually result in high blood pressure or hypertension.

According to the Mayo Clinic statistics, if you have diabetes you:

Are two to four times as likely to have a heart attack or stroke (compared to someone without diabetes)?

Are More Likely to Die from a Heart Attack

People who have diabetes have the same risk for sudden death from a heart attack as someone who has already had a heart attack. The NBC correspondent, who recently died from a heart attack, had diabetes and coronary artery disease, which increased the risk of sudden death. Unfortunately, about 70 percent of people with diabetes are not aware of those risks.

On the other hand, if you have suffered a heart attack, you should do analyses for diabetes or pre-diabetes. Some research showed that more than two-thirds of heart attack patients had blood sugar irregularity, which was in the form of pre-diabetes or diabetes.

How Might Broccoli Help?

Broccoli`s healthiest compound is the phytochemical sulforaphane. This compound can help you to restore your immune system as you grow older and improve the ability of the liver to eliminate the toxins, carcinogenic compounds and free radicals from your body. Sulforaphane protects the cells from mutation, cancer or other harmful effects.

This compound protects your heart as well, in two ways:

It helps in reduction of the harmful molecules called Radioactive Oxygen Species (ROS).

It activates a protein called nrf2, which stimulates antioxidants and detoxifying enzymes that protect your cells and tissues.

However, broccoli is not the only vegetable rich in sulforaphane. Plants from the cruciferous family, such as turnips, cabbage, mustard greens, cauliflower, rutabaga, radishes, bok choy and others also contain sulforaphane.

In addition, you should find out your nutritional type because some people do not do well with broccoli.

For example, if you are a protein nutritional type, you should not consume a lot dark green vegetables. This results with the over-alkalized body which can do more damage than to improve your health. This is because of the presence of many phytonutrients.

However, cauliflower can be beneficial for protein types.

It is very important to understand your body at a deeper level. If you`re a protein type and you consume broccoli, it can lead to metabolic biochemistry disruption which can eliminate its benefits.

What`s the Best Way to Eat Broccoli

The best way to get even more benefits from broccoli is to opt for the sprouts. Only 5 grams of broccoli sprouts have as many concentrations of glucoraphanin (sulforaphane precursor)as in 150 grams of mature broccoli.

If you decide for mature broccoli, you should be careful how you cook it because it can affect the nutrient content. You should avoid cooking it in the microwave because it will reduce the beneficial compounds by 80-90 percent. Lightly steaming is a much better solution, it will keep most of its nutrients intact.

The best way, of course, is to eat the broccoli raw.

Other Natural Methods to Prevent Diabetes and Protect Your Heart

Eating broccoli and other vegetables is not enough to keep the organism healthy.

You should consume grains, which are high-quality sources of protein, healthy fat (saturated fat), and vegetables depending on your nutritional type, all of which you can find in the bookTake Control of Your Health, and which are extremely important for the people with diabetes.

You should also try to exercise regularly. This can help you lose weight and reduce your risk of diabetes by almost 60 percent.

Diet combined with exercise will help you to prevent heart disease and diabetes. But, another very powerful factor is stress. Stress is the most common cause of heart attack, so you should know meditation, or simply have a long bath in the tub with a good book.